Real Web Hosting Reviews

Web Hosting Jargon Explained, Part 3: E-mails

Get a clear explanation of the technical terms used to describe e-mail features: PGP/GPG encryption, e-mail alias, e-mail forward, etc.

Emails

In addition to hosting your website, your plan should offer management of your e-mail accounts for you. This allows you to have multiple e-mail addresses with your domain name in it, such as jsobrier@www.reviews-web-hosting.com. Having an e-mail address with your domain name looks more professional, and it is easier for your visitor to communicate with you: you should use common addresses such as webmaster@your-domain.com and contact@your-domain.com.

An alternative to our hosting provider is to use Gmail for your domain, which combines the great features of Gmail and addresses with your domain name.

E-mail Account

An e-mail account allows you to send and receive e-mails to a particular address, such as john@reviews-web-hosting.com. An e-mail account corresponds to an e-mail address attached to a mailbox. A web hosting plan usually offers several (often thousands) of e-mail accounts. You can give one to each person working with you on your website, or you can use different e-mail accounts for different purposes:

• a personal address for private exchanges
• an address for sales, one for feedback, etc.
• webmaster@your-domain.net for any inquiry about your website
• etc.

If you want to use several e-mail addresses, but want all of them to go to the same mailbox, look at the e-mail aliases.

E-mail Forwards / E-mail Forward Accounts

Instead of getting a new mailbox for each e-mail account, it is possible to forward e-mail addresses to another one, either to another e-mail address from your plan, or to your existing personal account @yahoo.com or @gmail.com.

Some web hosting plans limit the number of such e-mail addresses, and count them separately from regular e-mail accounts with a mailbox as e-mail forwards.

E-mail Forwarder

Like e-mail forwards, the e-mail forwarder feature allows you to forward e-mail accounts to another e-mail address. The only difference with an e-mail forward account is that it applies to all e-mail accounts.

E-mail Alias

An e-mail alias is simply a forwarding e-mail address.

E-mail Auto-Responder

You can set-up your e-mail account to reply automatically to each e-mail when you are unavailable or on vacation.

E-mail Catch-All Address

This is a special address that receives all e-mais to your domain. You can use a catch-all address to ensure that you will get e-mails even when the sender mistype your address. But in practice, you will get a lot of spam.

E-mail Storage

Your hosting plan may limit the size of your e-mail boxes. It can be a limit per e-mail account (such as 1GB per account), or across all accounts (such as 1,000GB across all e-mail accounts).

Webmail

You can use a desktop software such as Microsoft Mail, Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird to check your e-mails. A webmail lets you check your e-mails from any computer through your web browser. You can use both your e-mail client at home with all its feature, and the webmail from other computers.

Webmail for Mobiles

Some pans offers a special version of their webmail for mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android G1/G2. You can then check your e-mails from your cell phone.

Antivirus & Antiphishing

The antivirus flags all the e-mails that contain a virus as an attachment automatically, and prevents your computer from being infected by those viruses. The antiphishing filter detects forged e-mails which claim to come from your bank or Paypal to steal your login and passwords.

E-mail PGP/GPG Encryption

The webmail can give you the option to encrypt your e-mail, so that it can only be read by your recipient, using PGP/GPG. This requires you and your recipient to have a PGP key. This is a feature for advanced users.

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